Chapter 71
Mireya
Play - Breathe Me by Sia
Guilt is hope
I’m on the floor next to the bed when it happens.
Pathetic. Pathetic to be angry at myself for being myself.
The door opens wide and for a second, it doesn’t feel like my room anymore.
My back is pressed against the side of the bed, my knees pulled in like that might hold me together long enough to face him. Blue lifts his head at the sound, ears twitching and disappears beneath the bed a moment later. Now I’m all alone with the sound of footsteps entering the room.
My hands won’t stop shaking. Powder still ghosts the edge of the sink. I didn’t even clean it, didn’t care enough to pretend it didn’t happen.
I fucked up. I fucked up. And I’m still fucking it up.
Our eyes meet and something inside me stops trying to run. But then his gaze travels to the bathroom, then to the edge of the sink. Disbelief breaks inside his eyes, I see it, I feel it.
And I loathe it.
“Stand up,” he spits out. My throat tightens as his jaw clenches. “Stand up and look at me.”
I don’t, I just laugh instead. It comes out hollow at first and then it cracks in the middle and turns into something wet and stupid. I drag a hand over my face, but it doesn’t help.
Nothing helps. My skin feels too tight, and my thoughts are slipping away. I’m so so stupid… I’m disgusting.
“Fuck, Mireya—” His voice cuts off, and then he’s in front of me.
There’s a second, a single stupid second, where he just stares. Like he’s trying to make sense of what he’s seeing. As if maybe if he looks long enough I’ll rearrange into someone else, the person he thought I was. Sad, but brilliant, not breaking and weak.
He knows. He knows the worst thing about me.
I stand up, closing the door of the bathroom and pressing my back against it.
His hand moves before I see it coming. His fingers grab my jaw, tilting my head back, forcing my eyes on his.
“Look at me,” he says again, and this time it’s meaner. “Look at me and tell me how much you took.”
For a second, I just stare at him, then I smile. “Why?” I whisper. “So you can calculate how much trouble I’m in?”
His grip tightens around my cheeks. “Don’t.”
I lean into his hand instead, because I can’t help it, because even like this he feels safe and everything else doesn’t. “You’re angry,” I murmur, almost curious. “That’s new.”
“I’m not angry,” he snaps.
And that’s when I laugh again, soft and broken. “Yeah,” I breathe. “Okay.”
His thumb presses hard against my jaw. “Fuck,” he mutters, scanning my face like he’s trying to piece me together. “You’re—” His voice drops. “You’re high.”
I blink at him, the words take a second to land, then I nod. “Yeah,” I say. “I think I am...” I’m not okay too.
When the fear started crawling under my skin, waiting for him to come here and judge me, I fed it instead of fighting it. I wanted a few more minutes of silence and now…now he’s here, and I’m high again.
My smile collapses. “I didn’t mean to,” I choke, and now the tears come back, hot and unstoppable. “I didn’t—I just needed—it was one time, I just needed to—”
To let go.
“You came back and did more.”
I swallow hard and don’t answer. His hand drops from my face like I burned him from being myself.
“Are you trying to ruin yourself?” he demands. “Is that what this is? Because you’re doing a damn good job.”
“Don’t—” My voice breaks. “Don’t talk to me like that.”
“Like what?” he fires back. “Like you’re not throwing everything away? Like this doesn’t matter? Fuck…” He’s angry. Why is he so angry? “You’re high and you’re not thinking straight.”
“It matters,” I snap, pushing myself away from the door even though the room tilts. “It’s the only thing that matters. That’s the problem, don’t you get that?”
“Then why—”
“Because I can’t stop!” It rips out of me. Raw and ugly. My voice turns raspy, as though it has grown tired of watching me destroy myself, and carrying all the words I can never let out.
Where is the blade? You need it again. Feel. Breathe. Bleed.
“I can’t…I can’t just decide to be better, okay? I can’t wake up and suddenly not feel like I’m crawling out of my own skin every second I’m here, every test, every evaluation, every time I think about what happens if I fail…” My voice fractures. “I can’t stop needing it. It never fucking stops!”
I needed to forget…
Feel. Breathe. Bleed.
He stares at me like I’ve just said something unforgivable. Or maybe something he understands too well. “You should’ve told me,” he says finally, quieter now, but worse somehow. “How bad is it?” Stop. “How long has this been destroying you?”
Since it started hurting.
I shake my head immediately. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not your problem,” I bite out. “Because I’m not… I’m not your responsibility, and I’m definitely not something you get to fix.”
His expression hardens. “I already fixed it.”
“What?”
“The test,” he says flatly. “I swapped it.”
For a second, I genuinely don’t understand. My brain lags, struggling to catch up. “You what?”
“I took yours,” he says. “Put mine in its place, you passed.”
The world tilts harder this time. His jaw tightens, gaze sweeping over my face. “Pupils dilated, unstable posture, delayed response, agitation and fast heartbeat…” He’s disgusted. “How much, Mireya?”
I don’t like this, the way he looks at me…it’s the same one people get when they stop seeing you as a person and start seeing the damage like it’s the only thing written all over your face.
“Don’t do that,” I whisper.
“Answer the question. I can’t do that again, Mireya…” his voice is soft, and hurt, and it ruins me all over again. “I’ve already watched someone choose poison over themselves.”
“Damien, don’t—”
His voice lowers when he asks, “How much did you take?”
The breath coming out of my mouth sounds like a laugh. “Do I get points if I tell the truth?”
“You failed a drug test today, disappeared, and now I find you like this. You don’t get sarcasm. You answer.”
I smile anyway, trying to get Blue out of where he’s hiding. Anything to not make me stare at him and see the disappointment and fear in his eyes.
“I didn’t ask you to come here.”
“No,” he agrees. “You didn’t. And that’s exactly the problem.”
“You went through my test,” I say, angrier this time. He’s putting himself in danger. Again. Because I can’t fucking control my brain, my needs, my stupid pain. “That’s not your place—”
“I am your principal instructor,” he cuts in. “Everything that concerns you is my fucking place.”
I freeze. God, I hate when he does that, when he pulls rank like it’s nothing, like it doesn’t rearrange the dynamic between us.
“You don’t get to control this,” I say, quieter now.
“No,” he agrees again. “I get to intervene.”
Before I can react, he steps forward and grabs my hand, forcing me to stay there so I can’t look anywhere but at him. “Focus,” he orders.
My breath stutters and his grip isn’t gentle, but it’s not cruel either. “You can’t, you can’t do that.” I shake my head, stumbling back a step. “That’s… if they find out—”
“I don’t care.”
“Yes, you do,” I snapped. “You have to. This is your career, everything you’ve built for years, Damien!”
“I said I don’t care.” He steps closer again. “If it’s between that and you ruining your life over this, I don’t care.”
I stare at him, something in my chest twists so hard it hurts. “That’s not romantic,” I whisper. “That’s stupid.”
“Then, I’m fucking stupid,” he shoots back.
“You’re going to lose everything,” I whisper, hiding my eyes with my palms. “I can’t be the reason why you’re risking everything.”
“And you were about to lose everything,” he counters. “At least this way one of us doesn’t.”
“That’s not how this works!”
“It is now,” he replies with a certainty that leaves no room to argue.
I laugh again, but there’s nothing left in it. “You don’t get to decide that for me.”
“And you don’t get to destroy yourself in front of me and expect me to just, what? Watch?”
“Yes!” I shout. “Yes, you do, because that’s the job. That’s the boundary, you’re my instructor, not—” My voice catches. Not what, Mireya?
His expression shifts slowly when he understands what I’m trying to keep hidden. “You think this is about boundaries?” he says, softer now. “You think that’s what this is?”
I step back carefully. I should stop talking, but I can’t.
“It should be,” I say, even as my voice shakes. “It has to be.”
He closes the distance again, slower this time. “And if I don’t want it to be?”
“You don’t mean that, Damien…”
“Don’t I?” He’s close enough now that I can feel the heat of him, solid and real in a way I’m not. I hate it. I need it.
“You’re not thinking clearly,” I say, but it sounds weak even to me. “You just…you think you’re helping, but you’re not. You’re just making it worse.”
“Worse than this?” he gestures at me, at the room, the mess, the state of me. “Worse than you on the floor, shaking and lying to yourself?”
“I’m not lying to myself.”
“You are!” He snaps, his voice breaking through the room louder than I’ve ever heard it.
I flinch, and something in his face breaks, then he exhales sharply, as if trying to pull himself back together and failing. “Come here,” he says.
I shake my head immediately. “No.”
“Come. Here.”
“I said no.”
He doesn’t argue again, he just moves, closes the space, grabs my arm and pulls me into him. I hit his chest with a weak, useless protest. “Stop—”
“Enough.” His arms wrap around me, tight and…
safe. Fucking safe. That’s what breaks me.
Because I can fight the anger, I can fight the disappointment, I can even fight myself, most days.
But this? This I can’t. I collapse into him with a sob, fingers clutching at his shirt like it’s the only thing keeping me upright.
“I hate this,” I choke. “I hate it, I hate it, I hate it—”
“I know.”
“I can’t keep doing this, it hurts so much,” I sob harder against him.
“I know, Mireya. I know.”
“You shouldn’t have done that,” I whisper, burying my face against him. “You shouldn’t have. You’re going to regret it…”
His hand comes up to the back of my head, pressing me closer. “I won’t.”
“You will.”
“I won’t,” he breathes quietly against me.
I pull back just enough to look at him, vision blurred, breath uneven. “You’re ruining yourself for me.”
Something in his expression softens.“You don’t get to tell me what I’m willing to lose,” he says quietly.
His eyes fall back on the stains of blood on my shorts. The fresh cuts. And his hand covers them immediately, shielding them from this outside world, from me.
His gaze met mine again as his fingers tighten around my raw and bleeding skin carefully.
“Don’t look at them like they’re the solution. Focus on me,” his voice drops. “If you need something to cut through the pain, let it be me. I can take it.”
And I fall for it. I fall for him.